Cooper Union Offers to Let President Go as Part of Deal With State Attorney General

Cooper Union has offered not to renew its president’s contract to try to address an inquiry into the college’s finances and a lawsuit over its decision to charge undergraduates tuition for the first time in more than a century.

Last week, the Cooper Union board voted to offer to let the college’s president, Jamshed Bharucha, go after his contract expires next year, as part of a larger deal with the state attorney general’s office, according to three people with knowledge of the discussions.

At that time, the school borrowed $175 million to construct a new building in the East Village, using the land it owns under the Chrysler Building as collateral. In the process, it renegotiated the rent it charged to Tishman Speyer Properties, which controls the Chrysler Building, in an arrangement that the board’s critics said grossly undervalued the land. Among the issues the attorney general is exploring is whether Cooper Union board members had conflicts of interests when the rental agreement was made.

Mr. Bharucha, an academic with a background in cognitive neuroscience, became president in 2011, so those interlocking deals predate him. But he shepherded the start of tuition, and, according to some board members, he alienated people across the school community, including board members who supported instituting tuition.

Two board members, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the board was declining to comment publicly, said that regardless of the attorney general’s inquiry, a renewal of Mr. Bharucha’s contract was far from assured.

Mr. Bharucha’s departure would not end the investigation. However, the board’s vote, which was reported by The Wall Street Journal on Thursday, puts the college and the attorney general one step closer to a deal that is expected to also include a package of procedural reforms and monitoring, according to a person with knowledge of the discussions but who was not authorized to speak publicly about them.

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Cooper Union charged tuition to this year's freshmen for the first time in more than a century.CreditMichael Appleton for The New York Times

Returning the school to financial health and restoring free tuition “is going to take a dramatic change in the way Cooper Union is run, therefore Bharucha has to go,” said Richard Emery, a lawyer who is representing a group of faculty, alumni and students called the Committee to Save Cooper Union in a lawsuit challenging the tuition.

“The entire financial architecture of the organization, of the school has to be redesigned.”

The college, formally the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, was founded in 1859, and endowed with valuable New York City real estate by the industrialist Peter Cooper with the goal of educating working-class New Yorkers.

Mr. Emery has argued that the way Mr. Cooper set up the school, he intended to require that it be free, and to alter that would require court approval.

Lawyers for the board, however, say that the trust only requires the school provide some free nighttime lectures.

“Words, aspirations, quotes, dreams are not binding,” Barbara Mather, a lawyer for the trustees, said last year.

The attorney general’s office has been trying to mediate between the two sides.

Mr. Bharucha said in an interview on Friday that when he joined the college, he had not planned to institute tuition, but it became clear that the school’s operating deficit was double what had been previously thought. He put in motion a plan to stabilize its finances, he said, by charging tuition to undergraduates on a sliding scale depending on need, up to about $20,000 a year, and by starting new programs, like master’s degree studies, to generate more revenue. This year’s freshman class was the first to be charged under the tuition schedule.

Mr. Bharucha said returning to a tuition-free model at the college would be a “catastrophic mistake.” But he declined to discuss last week’s board vote or the possibilities for his life after Cooper Union.

“I have no regrets about taking the job or about the leadership that I have exercised because Cooper Union is an extraordinary place,” Mr. Bharucha said. “It was attractive to me then, and it still is now.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A15 of the New York edition with the headline: Cooper Union, in Deal Over Inquiry Into Tuition, Offers to Let President Go. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe